Fires in SoCal and BigCloset

Submitted by Erin Halfelven on 2009, August 31 - 4:37pm
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People who have been seeing news about the fires in the LA area should be reassured that I am in no danger, the big fire is 40 miles away and going up the wrong mountain. Smaller closer fires are not a threat either at this time. However...

There is a slender possibility that power or internet connectivity to downtown LA where the BC servers are located could be disrupted for hours or even days. If that happens, Bob Arnold has arrangements to bring up a substitute version of BigCloset on one of his servers in New York State. So, if you can't get to BC for more than two hours, check on the Stardust site for news of where to point your browser to keep reading. Posting on a substitute site will be suspended unless the outage is longer than two days.

We also have a hurricane headed this way, expected to be here sometime on the weekend or early next week. Rains in SoCal can be very disruptive so we are going to keep this contingency plan in place for a couple of weeks at least.

Again, I'm safe, though the smoke sometimes blows this way and gives my sinuses fits.

Hugs to all,
Erin


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LA Fires and the hurricane

Submitted by Admin on 2009, August 31 - 5:15pm.

I've had a discussion with Erin via Skype and plans have been put in place in the somewhat unlikely event that either the LA fires or the hurricane knock out Topshelf for more than a few hours. I do a daily backup of all of the site files and data every day anyway to no matter what happens to the server in LA the site can come back reasonably intact.

We both think the chances of physical damage to the server itself is pretty remote. What's more likely to happen is that fire damage may knock out either the Internet connection or the power to the server center itself. The other possibility is that the hurricane now moving up the coast may cause flooding or wind damage that could also knock out the power or the Internet connection. Either way, plans are in place that, if BCTS is likely to be down more than 6 to 12 hours or more, a backup copy of the site will go up on one of my servers here in upstate NY until the LA server comes back to life again.

Keep watching here on Stardust so that if something does happen out in LA you'll get the latest details as we can get them to you.

Bob Arnold